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Vegetable stock - the thermomix vegetable stock is really the epitome of why everyone should get a Thermomix!
What is it? If you need to ask this...
get straight to your EveryDay Cookbook and do the recipe!! Really!
Basically - it is a concentrated paste of vegetables, herbs and salt. It is delicious and is used as a stock equivelant (MUCH better in my view). Where your normal recipe would say stock... use this. Where it asks for a stock cube... use this.
Why? Well.... that's the question really isn't it.
There are two parts to this post. first there is the recipe itself - how to go about it, and secondly there is the question on the salt.
Lets look at the recipe first. The recipe has a great mix of vegetables, herbs and salt which you chop, cook and then puree into a paste. (yes, it is that easy!)
There are three questions I commonly get and I'd like to answer them here.
HINT: As stated, without the salt in the stock you need to freeze your stock. Lay a plastic bag over your icecube tray and then fill up the cubes. That way, when the stock is frozen, you just need to lift the bag and you already have them in the bag for freezing.
Now, lets talk salt. Some people get all strung out on the salt in the stock. No doubt about it... it is salty! UNTIL DILUTED. That is something that some people just don't get! This is a concentrate!
According to this pamphlet put out by the QLD government, you are advised to look for items that have a salt per serve amount of less than 150mg. In a day, you are advised to stick to less than 2500mg and reduce it to 1400mg if you can.
Now lets look at your stock. There is a recipe to nutritional panel converter set up by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand. When I put in the recipe, the converter shows that there is 6000mg of salt in the recipe. That's a lot. BUT - there are 35 tablespoons of stock in that recipe - divide 6000 by 35 and you get 171mg.
It doesn't stop there though - each tablespoon makes a LITRE of stuff (soup, rissotto etc) and unless you are going to eat/drink an entire litre of the food, you need to divide that too. Even if you were very hungry and you have 500g of soup, casserole or rissotto - you are looking at a super sized serve with only 80mg of salt. A regular serve of 300g would give you about 55mg.
Lets put that into perspecitive... would you put a tablespoon of parmesan cheese into your rissotto? That amount of parmesan cheese has 2 to 4 times the salt. Another point is - even an egg has 70g of salt
Lets say you are living on Thermomix Potato and leek soup, you would have to have nearly 9 litres of soup to get to the minimum of salt recommended by that pamphlet by the QLD Gov.
My sister in law works for the food standards section of the department of health in SA and has given me a good insight into the question of salt.
Firstly - she tells me that the salt that you add to your meals yourself (by shaking some on, or using it in your stock) is only 5% of your daily intake of salt! Inherent in that is the implied unassailable fact that 95% of your salt comes from processed/packaged food as there is very little natural salt in fresh food. Thermomix owners generally do not use much (if any) processed foods so treat yourself to a little salt in your meals - the operative word here folks is little :).
The other thing that I found incredibly interesting, is that the national health authority is thinking of INCREASING the amount of salt allowed into our diet so "Australians can get somewhere near" the recommended amount! That is shocking!
Get a Thermomix I say!!!
Categories: Basics, Gluten Free, VERY useful information